NASCAR took Dillon‘s car back to the R&D Center following the Cup race at Martinsville Speedway last month, and were later issued an L1 penalty.
After further inspecting the car, they found a violation relating to the ‘Underwing Assembly Mounting & Underwing Stay Assembly Hardware’ section of the rulebook. Dillon had finished 12th at Martinsville.
As a result, Richard Childress Racing was penalized 60 driver and owner points, as well as five playoff points. Crew chief Keith Rodden was suspended for the next two championship events and fined $75,000.
NASCAR recently amended the appeals process, making it impossible to rescind any penalty completely if a team was found to have violated the rules. This came following the controversial ruling of an appeals panel where all four Hendrick Motorsports cars were found to have violated the rulebook, yet all points penalties (100 points and ten playoff points per car) were erased.
The panels are still allowed to modify penalties, but in this case, the panel chose to stand by NASCAR’s original ruling.
The three-person panel was made up by Lake Speed, Kevin Whitaker, and J. Kirk Russell.
They offered the following reasoning for upholding the original penalties: “As submitted the nuts are not a thread locking device – they are connected and part of the turn buckle. The nuts do not lock the assembly. Therefore, the assembly has been modified.”
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